Songfacts®:

• Sunny Sweeney married young and didn't get to go through a bad girl phase, so when she was presented with this song about a woman who demagnetizes her moral compass and hits the town, she jumped on it.
  
  "I related to the song that much," she said on the Songfacts Podcast. "I've made really bad choices in my life - I've been married twice to the wrong people. It's not anything I'm proud of but is part of who I am. I feel like that song came along at a time in my life when I was recovering from that stuff."
• The first single from Sweeney's Provoked album, "Bad Girl Phase" was penned by Nashville singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, who also co-wrote Miranda Lambert's hit tune "Mama's Broken Heart"; Jessie Jo Dillon, who is the daughter of legendary Nashville songwriter Dean Dillon; and Atlanta singer-songwriter Shannon Wright.
  
  Sweeney recalled to Billboard magazine: "My producer, Luke Wooten, came in and said, 'I need to play you this song. It sounds exactly like you.' He played it, and I said 'If that song is not available, it was a totally cruel joke for you to play it.' I was super-excited to put it on the record."
• The three songwriters are all friends of Sweeney, and when her producer brought played her the sassy tune she was convinced they penned it about her. "I truly did feel like it was written for me," she told The Boot. "It wasn't - I've actually asked them, 'Did y'all write that about me? Because it sounds like it was me.' And they were like, 'No, we didn't write it about you, but it does sound like you.'"
• As a self-proclaimed bad girl, Jessie Jo Dillon wanted to honor her fellow female outlaws with a celebratory anthem. She told Songfacts in a 2021 interview: "I love that song so much and loved writing it. I've been called a lot of things in my life, but a 'good girl' isn't one of them. My dad is basically an outlaw and always told me girls can be one, too. I smoke, I drink, I cuss, and live a colorful life. That isn't the usual archetype of a put-together Southern woman. Men are celebrated for that same behavior, so why can't women be?
  
  I wanted to write something for all the bad girls out there, real and fictionalized. I've always looked up to the girls that have been unabashedly themselves and make few apologies about it... Stevie Nicks, Joan Harris from Mad Men, Debbie Harry, Gloria Steinem, Sheryl Crow, Samantha Jones from Sex And The City, Zelda Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin... I could go on and on. I love the line, 'Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.' Kinda sums it up. God bless Jackie Kennedy for being able to smile through it all, but I've always been a bit more of a Marilyn."